


Via Stulti Sero Paeniteat

by Greenleaf66



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 10:15:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9717692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenleaf66/pseuds/Greenleaf66
Summary: Maze makes some decisions and acts on them





	

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: The translation for the Latin title appears in the End Notes - This was intended as a one-shot following S2E13, as I was so upset to see the dilemma our favourite pair find themselves in. I tried to write it from Chloe’s point of view, but Maze kept interrupting, so I let her have her say (she insisted anyway)…..This is my first fic actually posted to AO3, hope you all enjoy it. Not beta’d, so please forgive any errors you find! Comments welcome!

Scene 1: Prologue

Maze had made up her mind. It had taken nearly three weeks since Lucifer’s sudden vanishing act, but she was convinced more than ever that now was the right time. 

She put her key in the lock of the apartment she shared with the Detective and let herself in. It was Saturday morning and it was early and Chloe should still be in bed if she followed her normal day-off habits.

But she wasn’t. Instead, Maze saw her pouring a coffee, hair disheveled with sleep, wearing the LAPD oversized man’s T-shirt she preferred to sleep in.

“Hey,” Maze said, tossing her keys onto the counter, “any more of that coffee?” Chloe nodded absently. “Didn’t expect to see you up so early,” as she helped herself to a cup of the steaming liquid.

“You and I need to talk, Decker, and it might as well be now, when your kid’s with her dad, so we can talk alone………There are some things that you need to know.”

“What things?” Chloe asked sleepily. Maze noticed the red-rimmed eyes and the nose that would have done Rudolf proud.

“Lucifer.”

“Please, Maze, I don’t want to talk about Lucifer, okay? I just don’t want to think about him……why can’t you just leave it alone?”

Maze snorted. “Because you can’t. I hear you having nightmares…..I hear you crying at night when you think I’m asleep….I know you’re dreaming about him and crying over him. Frankly it’s driving me crazy. I’ve thought a lot about this, whether it was my place to say anything or not, so I’m gonna take a chance and hope you’re ready to hear some truth--”

“Truth? What truth? And if you start all that weird shit again about Lucifer really being the Devil--” 

She turned to face her roommate and dropped the full cup of coffee to the floor, ignoring the shattering of the cup and the liquid that splashed everywhere.

Maze’s face had changed, her beautiful features still present on the right side, but the left half of her face seemed to have been stripped of its flesh, revealing the skull and orbital socket where a milky white eye protruded balefully and though her mouth was closed, Chloe could see teeth, pointed teeth…….

A little shimmer passed over the mutilated face and Maze’s usual fine features were intact once more.

“I thought you’d better know the truth about things,” Maze said quietly, eye-balling her flat-mate carefully. It wouldn’t do much good driving her insane at this point now, would it?

###

Scene 2: The Knack

It didn’t take Maze long to find The Knack, a little out of the way bar tucked in a side street in a less popular neighbourhood of LA. When he finally called her, nearly three months had passed since he left. 

She had tried persuading him to come to the apartment she shared with Chloe, but he was having none of it, even though she assured him that the detective was out and not expected back all day. 

Maze knew she had gone 'there' again, where she could wallow in her pain with no one around.

She had been so happy to hear Lucifer’s familiar voice that she did not press the point and agreed to meet him at a place of his choosing. Stepping into the bar, she noted it was a trifle seedy for Lucifer’s usual jam, but then he was different now, so much more so after he had returned from Hell this time. And who knows how much different since he’s been gone. 

Something had happened to him down there and she hadn’t even had the chance to ask him what. He had closed Lux with barely a day’s notice and then simply vanished.…

It didn’t take long to spot the familiar form, black Prada jacket folded over the arm of his chair, dark blue shirt rolled up at the cuffs, nursing two fingers of something amber, hunched over and morosely staring at the opposite wall. 

He didn’t turn when she approached, instead taking a sip from the glass and nodding his head “Maze.”

She grabbed the chair opposite and took a long look at him.

“You look like shit, Lucifer.” His stubble was just a little too long in spots, as if he started to trim it and then just couldn’t be bothered. Little tufts of curls stuck out here and there where he’d forgot or didn’t bother to apply any product to keep it under control.

But it was his face that shocked her more. He looked haggard, dark circles under his eyes, the face she knew so well thinner, paler, the haunted eyes rimmed in red. If he’d been human she would have guessed that he hadn’t slept in days or been on a bender for at least that long.

“Nice to see you too,” he said sarcastically. “But at least you’re here. I wasn’t sure you’d actually show up.” He raised his hand in the air and indicated two more of whatever it was he was drinking.

“Why wouldn’t I show up, Lucifer, don’t I always?” watching as he lowered his gaze to the drink in front of him.

“Um, yes……….” His voice dropped to a whisper, then he quietly said “How is she?”

Maze glared at him, little daggers of accusation flashing from her dark eyes.

“How the hell do you think she is? She’s broken, Lucifer. It was you who broke her, after all--”

“I left to protect her!” But his protest was lost on Maze.

“No, you left to protect YOU,” she answered. 

“ I HAD TO,” he barked. “Dad put her here to trick me! I couldn’t let him do that--” His mind’s eye pictured the dream he had been having almost every night since he left, those aqua eyes scanning his penthouse and filling with tears, her heartbroken voice asking “why, Lucifer, why are you doing this?”

Maze was scowling. “You don’t know that for sure! She knows nothing about being a so-called ‘miracle’…….nothing!” she hissed at him.

“Oh yeah? How do you figure that?” Amenadiel had told him the same at the hospital. “She knows nothing! We’ve ALL been Father’s pawns!”

“Because I told her,” Maze said softly. At that his eyes snapped to her face and she could see the red haze rising in his glance. Why is he being such an idiot about this? 

“I told her because she needed to know – she’s been a basket case since you left. Don’t forget, I actually live with her. And, you know what? I like her. She’s brave for a human, braver than most of them. She’s a lot like you in a lot of ways….”

He snorted in derision but kept his gaze leveled on her face. “What did you tell her?”

“Not all of it, obviously. But I told her about you, who, I mean what you are….”

“I’ve told her a thousand times and she never believed me--”

Maze looked at him. “Dammit, Lucifer! Just how dumb have you become? I fucking showed her my real face, don’t you get it? Over coffee one morning.” He stared at her in complete silence, so she continued.

“I told her about us coming to LA, about Amenadiel blessing Penelope, Charlotte being your mother, about us KILLING YOU so you could go to Hell to get her the antidote…”

“Wh-what did she say?”

“She had some questions, yeah, quite a few, and I answered her without, you know, saying anything that would send her to an asylum--”

“And now?” His voice was so quiet Maze almost didn’t hear the question. He was looking down at the drink in his hand. Is that a spot of wetness under his eyes?

“Well, she had to believe me after I showed her. She didn’t take it badly at all, now that I really think about it……I think she must’ve been sort of half-convinced anyway and she mentioned a lot of stuff she thought was weird that happened around you……and about that night in the hangar with Malcolm….

“And Linda’s been a big help in that regard.”

His eyes shot to her face again, but before he could demand an answer, she continued, “Linda’s part of our girl-tribe, Lucifer, you know girls’ night out and all that? You suggested it in the first place and we’ve sort of kept it going …. well, sometimes. I called Linda and she told Chloe that she had seen your face and believed you….we talked then, but I don’t know if those two have talked about it since….

“She’s holding it together at work, at least she goes in every day and seems to be getting cases. And she’s almost normal around the kid, you know, doing the mom stuff and what have you…….

“But at night she cries—I mean at least the nights I’m home. The apartment walls aren’t Italian marble, they’re pretty thin. She tries to keep it quiet, but she doesn’t get that my hearing is different. I’m pretty sure she has nightmares most of the time …. I can hear those too, she talks a lot in her sleep…..”

Lucifer had a horrible squeezing feeling in his chest at the thought of Chloe, lonely and broken, with no one to confide in, no one to hold onto. It hurt him and it was a pain that he was all too familiar with. Is there anything I touch that I do not spoil?

“I thought it would pass. But she, well, it’s like, um,” a little knot appeared in her smooth forehead as she looked for the right words, “it’s like she’s just going through the motions, doing what she has to do, but not really, you know, living it, like she’s ‘flat’ or something….

“And she drinks a lot more than she used to,” she actually chuckled, before adding, “She yells at your dad sometimes when she’s drunk – it’s pretty funny actually.”

“She does what?”

“She yells at God. One night she got really drunk on tequila……..started shaking her fist at the sky and yelling ‘why are you doing this to us? If you had the guts to come down here I’d kick your celestial ass for you!’ I think is how she put it……”

Lucifer felt a swell of pride, and he couldn’t stop a small smile at the thought of a drunken Chloe yelling at his father, something he’d done on more than one occasion himself.

Maze was watching him closely. “You know, I don’t get the feeling she’s any kind of tool of your dad, not after hearing her curse him – more than once, I might add. Why do you think she’s part of some horrible plot against you?”

“Because He’s a manipulative SOB and He makes people do things, even if they don’t want to – don’t you get it? He just controls it…….all of it…..all the time--” Lucifer’s face was glum.

“Fuck, Lucifer!” She snarled at him, “have you ever tried to make that woman do anything she didn’t want to do? Good luck with that one. She’s the most bull-headed, stubborn human I’ve ever met!”

But Lucifer was staring off into the distance, a kaleidoscope of emotion crossing his face in rapid succession.

“Why do you look like that? Did you ever think, even for one second, that Chloe’s birth had nothing to do with you?”

“What could you possibly mean by that?” He gave her one of his don’t-fuck-with-me stares and she groaned and actually rolled her eyes, as if a bit of Chloe had rubbed off on her. 

“What I mean is, did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe your father was only answering a prayer from Chloe’s parents? She was born 30 years before we came here – what if it is just that? Amenadiel said your father sent him to bless a childless couple and that’s all he knows about it. Maybe it’s just a fucking accident that you even met her…..If what you are saying is true, then that would mean your dad would know in advance exactly when you were going to leave Hell--” 

She silenced him with a glare while she continued “It was your mom who put out this stupid spin of ‘it’s all your father’s fault, it’s a trap to destroy you’ crap. That selfish manipulative bitch, I don’t care if she is a fucking Goddess! Hell forbid, your honest forthright mother should ever tell you a lie to suit her own purposes……..” 

She raised an eyebrow and glared at him sourly. He was reliving his mother’s confession to him in Hell the night they saved Chloe. This is all my fault, son…..

“And even if this is all some warped plot of your dad’s, maybe you ignoring her and hurting her is part of his plan as well – or maybe YOU are just doing all this to yourself! To both of you. 

“She doesn’t deserve it, you know--”

He looked at her, eyes filled with sadness and longing. “I know that. She deserves so much better than me, she deserves to be happy, with someone worthy of her--”

“She doesn’t want someone ‘worthy’ of her – she wants YOU. Whether your Dad is controlling it or not, Chloe loves your sorry ass. 

“So, why didn’t you just let her die instead of punishing her?”

“WHAT?” 

“Instead of punishing her, Lucifer. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you, and I mean ever, torture someone who hasn’t done anything to deserve it. Letting her die would have been kinder than killing her slowly, the way you are doing….”

“That was never my intention!” he growled.

Maze snorted at him, “Well, we all know where that road goes, don’t we?”

He was stung into silence, as if she had slapped him, so she decided to go in for the coup de grace.

“This is how you use your vaunted free will is it? Intending one thing and having it result in something else? You know what? Maybe it doesn’t matter at all. If your Dad is controlling every possibility all of the time, then whatever you do is part of the plan anyway…..

“So why don’t you just do what makes you happy? What makes her happy? Did you ever think of that?” She pulled herself short before jabbing a well-manicured finger into his chest. *Oh, she was so going to kick his ass.)

“I’ve known you since forever and I’ve never seen you like this, Lucifer! And it’s pissing me off – you can’t seem to DO anything, and that’s NOT the Lucifer that I know…….this one” she jerked a thumb at him “that just sits there in defeat---”

He half got out of his chair and growled “I will NOT be defeated. I Will Not Bend!”

Maze just looked at him. “Maybe that’s what He hopes you’ll say, you know, laying out the path and letting you just screw yourself with your own free will….and making yourself suffer more and more. 

“Yeah, you escaped Hell all right. Except, you just take it with you wherever you go, so what’s the damned difference? Unfortunately, the people who care about you have to live in this personal hell you’ve created……..and none of us want to! You wouldn’t even let us try and help you…”

He gave her a startled look and his eyes shone amber, not the red fire of his anger, but a soft glow that signaled he was paying attention to a vital piece of information.

“None of you can help me--”

Maze pressed the point. “Oh, you mean like we didn’t help you get in and out of Hell to save Chloe? Yeah, that didn’t work much……

“You don’t know whether we could have helped or not, you didn’t give us the chance – you just left us all hanging in limbo, not knowing what happened to you. I’ve seen you push people away who care, now it seems you just run. The old Lucifer would never run away, the old Lucifer would have faced whatever it is head on and told the universe to piss off. You really have changed………

“You are so damned paranoid about your father” (thank you, Linda, for letting me browse through your library), “that you can’t even tell who your friends are any more or who truly cares about you…… Unless you hold some deal over their heads…….

“You know, I always thought you’d come out on top somehow, but you’re just sinking under the waves, and if that’s what your Father wanted all along, well then, you’re playing right into his hands and helping him do it to you.”

This time he didn’t bother to bend his head and let her see the tear that made its way down his cheek. She was right of course. His counsellor, his protector, his creation. His friend.

“Dear Maze,” he said with unusual gentleness, “when did you become so wise?” He reached across the table, brought a dark hand to his lips and kissed it softly.

After a long moment that shot a pang of something through her chest (Is he finally listening to me? Really listening?) she said “I know where she is.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I know where she goes on Sundays – at least where she goes now….She goes to The Beach.”

Lucifer’s eyes bore into hers, but his face was confused “Beach? What beach are you talking about?”

“THE beach, Lucifer. The one where we landed, where I cut your wings off….where you burned them,” she added softly. “She goes there and just sits by herself. I followed her one day because I wanted to know what she was doing – every Sunday on a day off, she makes coffee, grabs a blanket or a mat, and just takes off and doesn’t come back for a few hours. She wouldn’t tell me where, so I followed her one day.

“She just sits there, right where, you know, all the wing stuff happened. Like she’s waiting for something……”

He reacted as if she’d slapped him, but Maze continued.

“Last week I decided to walk out there and find out why. She told me she knew you came there sometimes, that it’s where she finally worked up the nerve to kiss you…..that she could feel you there…….”

Lucifer stood up and donned his jacket, then turned and pulled Maze out of her chair and into his arms. Planting a kiss on her forehead, he hugged her to him and whispered “thank you” into his demon’s (no, his friend’s) very surprised ear.

 

###

Scene 3: The Beach

He parked the Corvette beside the concession stand, and handed a couple of folded bills to the attendant, a bored teen with no customers, and said “Look after the car, would you?” When the kid saw the two Benjamin Franklins in his hand, he answered with a shaky “sure, mister” and watched as Lucifer doffed his shoes and socks, placed the discarded items into the trunk and rolled up his pant legs. Sand and expensive Italian leather simply did not mix well…..

He realized how nervous he was when he felt the slight tremor in his hands. And yet, Maze’s words had sunk in and the thought that possessed him was Why not do what makes you happy? What makes her happy? 

He knew that he didn’t deserve her forgiveness. Thinking of her as his father’s willing tool, he had acted as if that was the truth, and not bothered to think of how his actions would affect her. He had put his own wellbeing first, even though he told himself that he was leaving to help her. Maze was right. 

And so was Linda. She always called it avoidance, distraction, refusal to look within – he was humbled by the thought. He had once told the doctor angrily that she had a limited grasp of what was real, and she countered by offering her simplicity as a way to cut through the Gordian knot…….He was ‘older than dirt’ as the humans often said. Old, yet still a bloody fool.

It was late spring and the sand was warm, not fire-hot as it got in the high summer, and comfortable to walk on with bare feet. He did not rush, rather moved slowly along the beach towards the tiny figure off in the distance, his mind’s eye replaying memories of his time with her. 

She had never asked anything of him (well, if you don’t count demanding that he behave himself in certain circumstances), but never anything for herself. He had plenty of money and he knew that she struggled raising a child on her police wages. He would have gladly helped her, but she never asked, and had probably never even thought of asking. She could have had favours, a promotion, or a dozen things he would have happily arranged for her…….for certain ‘return favours at a later date’. He knew what payback he would have asked for, and no doubt she did too.

But all she had ever asked was that he trust her, as she trusted him.

He felt a twinge in his chest and knew that the feeling was guilt. Maze was so right. He had punished the one person who had never deserved it, the one person whose loyalty and trust had been given willingly, with reservations certainly (and he couldn’t blame her for that), but she had offered herself to him unselfishly, and he had run. Like the ‘chicken’ Linda had once accused him of being. 

Chloe didn’t hear him approach behind her. She was sitting with her knees drawn up, a book sitting on them, head resting leftward on top of it.

“Detective--” he said quietly when he was a few feet away. The slightly manic laugh she gave in response surprised him and he stopped.

“Oh, God, you bastard!” she cried. “Hallucinations? Really? Haven’t you fucked things up enough yet?” before she choked. She raised her head skyward and did not even turn towards him.

Lucifer crossed the last few feet that separated them and sat down beside her on the blanket, his back to the water and drawn even with her upraised knees, so that they faced each other. 

“It’s me….” he said softly and only then did she whip her head around, staring at him with owlish eyes and a flash of astonishment that was quickly replaced by a look of such pain that it twisted his insides horribly.

Her beautiful aqua eyes were rimmed in red, dark circles beneath them. The lovely face was thinner, cheeks slightly hollow, and her skin was pale, not its usual healthy sun-kissed hue. She wore a scooped neck T-shirt and he could see her collar bones protruding far more than he remembered, every pore and curve and length of her burned painfully into his inner eye………

“I – um – I – This is, I mean, it’s difficult--” he couldn’t find the words, could barely find the courage to look at her.

A gentle hand on his arm and her whispered “Is it really you?” made him involuntarily reach out and pull her into an embrace, the book on her knees falling to the blanket beside her. 

“I tried to stay away……but I can’t, I – it’s-- ” He held her so tightly, breathing her in, his lips beside her ear, and he heard himself whispering “I don’t want to be alone any more. I don’t want to run anymore. Chloe--” he almost choked on her name. “I want to be with you,” he declared, voice thick with emotion. “Please, Chloe, can you forgive me?”

She responded by raising a gentle hand to the back of his head, twining a finger in a wayward curl of his hair. Her touch was both a caress and an answer. “Silly Devil,” she whispered against his neck. “Don’t you know how much I love you……” and she kissed him softly.

They stayed that way, holding each other tightly, for what could have been a day or an hour, but was only a few long minutes, saying nothing, just feeling the flow of emotion between them.

He hadn’t noticed the book that had fallen beside her. It was his own leather-bound copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost, annotated with notes in Lucifer’s perfect script down most of the margins, in a dozen different languages and strings of indecipherable symbols. Maze had found it on the bedside table in the penthouse after he had left town. She had given it to Chloe a few days later. “It’s his favourite…” she had said. Chloe had taken to reading it and the few notes she could understand, hoping for insight perhaps, but mostly because holding something that he cherished made her feel somehow closer to him.

He also didn’t notice the makeshift bookmark tucked in the chapter she had been reading – something she had found that morning when smoothing out the sand beneath her blanket. 

A long white feather, bright and almost perfect, except for a slightly burnt tip.

###

Maze let the pair of binos drop around her neck, a huge smile plastered across her lovely face, black eyes glittering with amusement. She whipped her cel from the pocket of her leather jacket, scrolled down the programmed numbers, then punched “Dan.” He picked up on the second ring.

“Hi Maze, why would you possibly be calling me?”

“Dan, you’re going to need to keep Trixie for a couple of days – I’ll be around when you’re at work, maybe take the kid to the zoo or something” she couldn’t help but chuckle at how easily she had volunteered. “There’s been something of a development today and, um, Chloe is going to need a bit of privacy…….I’ll explain later, okay?”

“Development?” Dan’s voice was uncertain. “You sound so happy, what’s going on?”

“Do I?” she replied and realized, well, yes, she was happy. Delighted in fact. Her smile grew even wider.

“Wanna order in something to eat later? I’ve got a lot to tell you, stuff you, uh, really need to know…..” She trailed a slow tongue across her lower lip at the thought of just how she was going to clue Dan in, but shit, he was involved as well and he might as well get the skinny from her. 

Besides, it’d be fun (loads of fun, she grinned evilly) letting the Douche see her real face, and realizing that his innocent little child had already seen it and accepted. He had slept with the goddess of creation, after all, his kid was living with a demon and his ex was about to become the Devil’s lover. Maze liked a bit of wicked fun and she was pretty sure it would all turn out all right in the end…..and if it didn’t, well, shit happens, so what?

Lucifer had finally, FINALLY listened to her wise counsel, and actually done something sensible, the stubborn SOB. “Fuck, I really AM awesome!” She jumped onto the black Harley soft-tail, quietly backing it out of its resting spot near the Corvette, winking mischievously at the teen who was trying unsuccessfully to stop drooling at the sight of her.

She turned the key and roared up the coast highway, thinking, "Now maybe we can all go back to having some fun in this fucking place!"

**Author's Note:**

> End Note: The Latin title translates “A Fool’s Errand, Too Late for Regret” – if you wanted to know. I set it at that beach because it has some importance for Lucifer and Maze, a kind of a take-off point, and of course that’s where Chloe finally decided she wanted him. I realize it’s all a bit sappy, but I needed some “closure” after Ep.13, so it just kind of poured out. And Maze kept prodding me (she has the tenacity of a pitbull)!


End file.
